2. Education Crisis in Kenya
9 Million Registered in
Primary school
32% move to
secondary school
<10% to
College
<5% graduate
from uni
EMIS Data 2011: Provided by the Kenyan Ministry of Education
5. Why Kids Fail
Interaction and Students
information shared
amongst educational
stakeholders is next to
nil
Gov’t School Teachers
Data isn’t shared until
it’s too late
Parents
6. MPrep’s Solution
INCORRECT.
Why does a A Content-Aligned
mammal’s red blood
cell have no
had a nucleus in Quizzes and Tutorials
nucleus?
the beginning of its
1) Never had one it
development, but
was lost to make
2) Lost in its
room for
development Individualized
3) Not a true cell
hemoglobin.
4) Never needed Feedback
one < REPLY > Next
Back
Back < REPLY > Next
7. MPrep’s Solution
You have received Self-Assessment
80% on this quiz.
You are ranked & Competition
5/101 at Baba Dogo
and 239/1,234 in
Nairobi.
Value added for KIDS
Reply with Fert1 for • Access to quality
next quiz. • Self-evaluation
Back < REPLY > Next • Fun
8. Value Added
PARENTS
TEACHERS
SCHOOLS
DATA’S POWER GOV’T
- Individual assessment
- Adapt teaching
- Compete
10. Our Market and Revenue Model
MARKET Subscriptions – 85%
Sliding price
+ 30,000 schools Premium & Basic
+ 85% 1 teacher with Schools & Parents
web access
+ 75% Class 7+8
+ ALL want data
= 18,000 schools
Quizzes – 15%
+ 360,000 parents 25¢ each
+ 1.8 Million students
= 2 Million Impacted
11. Marketing and Sales:
Strength of Our Database and Network
Referrals
- 100% conversion
of early adopters
- 5 referrals for
every subscription
School Partnerships Database + Network
- Began at 15 schools - 4,000 questions, 16,000
- Now >4,000 students explanations
at >84 schools in every - Academic pulse of country
region of Kenya - KEPSHA partnership
13. Where the $ Goes
2012
Asking: $35,000
15% to close our $100K seed round
47%
38% IMPACT
- Academic
(goal is > 20%
Marketing &
Development increase in exam
Personnel scores)
Other - Societal
14. People Behind MPrep
Educational Engine
- Toni Maraviglia, CEO Advisors
- Mike Milanya, Content Director - Wendy Kopp, Teach
For America
- 13 Content Designers
- Chaula Gupta, TFA
- Sam Gichuru, Nailab
Technical Wizards
- Shabnam
- Kago Kagichiri, Lead Developer Aggarwal, Pearson
- Duncan Washington, Developer - Salim Amin, A24
Media
Operational Ninjas - Joseph
- Chris Asego, Operations Director Karuga, KEPSHA
- Peter Sereti, Sales Manager - Lydiah
Muchemi, Ministry
- Isaac Kosgei, Associate
of Education
You don’t have to be a teacher to know there is an education crisis in Kenya, especially since the start of free primary education in 2004. Essentially, 9 million students are officially enrolled in primary school, and a horrendous 32% enrol in secondary. This number gets lower and lower, as the education gets hire, but what concerned me the most is this red arrow. What happens to children who don’t get a primary school education? Really – it’s a sentence to a life of poverty or crime. Crime is what happens when kids fail, when they have no other options. I don’t blame them; I blame the educational system that gives them little opportunity to rise.
Why then, do these kids fail? I see two main reasons as an educator. No access to quality feedback and educational resources. They rely on their overburdened teacher for almost everything. In most impoverished schools, the teacher is often the gateway to knowledge, the only resource a student has. Really, that’s not fair to the teachers and students.
Little access to educational information by parents, teachers, schools, and gov’t. How can they figure out ways to help kids when they don’t know what to focus on? Without adequate knowledge, I’ve seen little interaction among these stakeholders. What we’ve done is found a way to provide both: access to quality educational materials, and providing a wealth of knowledge. We do this in two ways.
First a supplemental review tool for kids. Students take content aligned quizzes, testing what they know in class. They’re given individualized feedback for answer choice. (We actually have over 16,000 explanations in our database.) And they’re encouraged to compete from this basic ranking feature.
First a supplemental review tool for kids. Students take content aligned quizzes, testing what they know in class. They’re given individualized feedback for answer choice. (We actually have over 16,000 explanations in our database.) And they’re encouraged to compete from this basic ranking feature.
This not only adds value for kids because they are getting access, self-evaluation, and an enjoyable “game,” but also, we aggregate also this information into detailed data reports via the web/mobile web for parents, teachers, schools, and gov’t. This data saves all of these stakeholders an incredible amount of time (teachers don’t have to spend 5 hours marking each week), money (7,200/pupil currently wasted on low quality materials is actually more expensive than MPrep). And most importantly it increases communication among all these stakeholders.
This not only adds value for kids because they are getting access, self-evaluation, and an enjoyable “game,” but also, we aggregate also this information into detailed data reports via the web/mobile web for parents, teachers, schools, and gov’t. This data saves all of these stakeholders an incredible amount of time (teachers don’t have to spend 5 hours marking each week), money (7,200/pupil currently wasted on low quality materials is actually more expensive than MPrep). And most importantly it increases communication among all these stakeholders.
As you can see, we target the primary school market, focusing on those early adopters with Class 7 and 8 and web access. We’re looking at a huge amount of kids that can be impacted from this tool. Our money is made through basic and premium subscription fees incurred by mostly schools and parents. A small percentage of our revenue is made through billing prepaid airtime for the quizzes. This business model has allowed us to rapidly expand to a userbase of nearly 5,000 users by June, 84 schools, and all regions of Kenya represented. MPrep does NOT have a problem selling.
I like to think of our marketing strategy to look something like a tree. We’ve deep rooted our school partnerships to first launch our product, with a strong solid core of our question database an analytics. What we’ve found in terms of our marketing strategy is that by offering referreal to our networks – parents, head teachers, and teachers, we’re able to convert 4 times as many schools. Further our conversion rate is near 90% for our early adopters, an exciting number to know how valuable MPrep is to our customers.
Our roadmap is exciting. By the end of this year, we project to have 85K in revenue, and by year end 2014, nearly $3M, given our lucrative revenue model. As we grow with users and revenue we plan to also grow our technology to reflect market demands. In addition to that we also plan to expand to TZ, UG, and SA in 2013, and to other countries on the continent as markets demand.
The majority of MPrep’s money goes to personnel with other large budget items being technology and marketing. In terms of impact, we’re focusing on measurable academic impact first and are closely motinoring an impact study group that has actually shown a 23% increase in MPrep marks, and societal impact. More options for students, less poverty, less crime. We’re currently looking to close out 2012 with an additional $50K angel investment, and will immediately start fundraising for our series A.
These are the people behind Mprep, and like any good teacher, I like to categorize things. First we have our ed engine, which has over 155 years experience between all of us. Our technical wizards, our operational ninjas, and our powerhouse of partners and advisors. All of us driven, strategic, and working hard toward our mission.
